When I was shooting my feature film, Livelihood, I knew that it was going to need a lot of work in post production. I wanted the movie to look like it was shot on film, but at the time there was no such thing as a prosumer-level camera that shot 24p and had film gamma curves built in. As a result, during the post production process I experimented with numerous film-look solutions, from DIY methods using adjustment layers and transfer modes in After Effects to extremely expensive (at the time) plugins like Magic Bullet and Cinelook. As with most things in this world, the expensive solutions ended up being the best as far as quality and ease of use, which was very frustrating for someone trying to work on a microbudget.
After a few minutes I was able to get Film Effects to pretty closely replicate a Super8 emulation I created from Magic Bullet's Looks and Misfire.
However, as technology has become more advanced the price of these plugins has gone down dramatically, and their focus has also shifted to different aspects of the “film look”. These software packages still offer the traditional gamma, saturation, and color cast emulations of film stocks. I’m a big fan of these, as I like to shoot totally flat, and choose my looks in post, adjusting them depending on the dramatic content of the scene (or shot). Lately, though, it seems as if more companies are concentrating on emulating the grain, scratches, jitter and other such defects inherent in the film shooting, developing, and projection process. I assume this shift is occurring because these defects cannot be replicated in-camera (at least at this time), and as a result many plugins seem to have made these features the central core of their film look software.
One of the new contenders in the film look game that concentrates heavily on emulating the idiosyncrasies of film is NewBlueFX’s “Film Effects”. Based in California, NewBlue got their start in the audio effects business but in 2006 made the jump into the video effects market. Currently their video plugins are available for Corel VideoStudio, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Liquid, Avid Media Composer, Avid Xpress Pro, Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas, Final Cut Pro, and Thomson Grass Valley Edius. After Effects support is coming soon, according to their press materials.
A newsreal simulation preset gives the video a lot of jitter, scratches, and flickering, as well as adding a sepia cast.
Ease of Use
The installation of Film Effects was relatively easy, except that it installed into the plugin folder of an older version of Premiere. There was no place in the installer to set the default location. This is something that the makers of the software should consider putting into future releases. However, once I moved the files into the proper plugin folder, everything worked fine.
